(NaturalNews) Like him or not, it's a great quote, and an honest, truthful one.

"We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around." That was Ronald Reagan.

Those words, regardless of who spoke them, are absolutely spot-on when it comes the kind of government our founding fathers established for us... all of us, not just a select few. But during these days of government shutdown, the petulant political posturing of our president, Barack Obama, has reached new heights.

The punitive and arbitrary manner in which he is attempting to make the shutdown "as painful as possible" on the American people is worse than politics as usual. It's a pathetic, childish attitude that is sharpening discourse among the body politic and is poisoning the well of debate over truly important issues, like our spiraling national debt and the government's imposition on our basic freedom to eat, live and love the way we want, now and in the future.

'Just to be clear, the memorial is an open plaza. There is nothing to operate'

Jonathan V. Last at The Weekly Standard sums up the behavior thusly:

The conduct of the National Park Service over the last week might be the biggest scandal of the Obama administration. This is an expansive claim, of course. Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS, the NSA, the HHS mandate - this is an administration that has not lacked for appalling abuses of power. And we still have three years to go.

...[C]onsider the actions of the National Park Service since the government shutdown began. People first noticed what the NPS was up to when the World War II Memorial on the National Mall was "closed." Just to be clear, the memorial is an open plaza. There is nothing to operate. Sometimes there might be a ranger standing around. But he's not collecting tickets or opening gates. Putting up barricades and posting guards to "close" the World War II Memorial takes more resources and manpower than "keeping it open."

Last went on to describe more cantankerous closings - "a cute little historic site just outside of the capital in McLean, Virginia, called the Claude Moore Colonial Farm," the parking lot of George Washington's Mount Vernon home (which is privately owned) and Mount Rushmore outside Rapid City, S.D., are all closed by the Park Service.

"Think about that for a minute. The Park Service, which is supposed to serve the public by administering parks, is now in the business of forcing parks they don't administer to close. As Homer Simpson famously asked, did we lose a war?" he wrote.

'It's one thing for politicians to play shutdown theater...'

Continuing, he sums up all that is wrong about Barack Obama, who would have had to order such actions by the Park Service as head of the Executive Branch: "It's one thing for politicians to play shutdown theater. It's another thing entirely for a civil bureaucracy entrusted with the privilege of caring for our national heritage to wage war against the citizenry on behalf of a political party." Continuing, Last describes the zealotry behind the actions:

This is how deep the politicization of Barack Obama's administration goes. The Park Service falls under the Department of the Interior, and its director is a political appointee. Historically, the directorship has been nonpartisan and the service has functioned as a civil, not a political, unit. Before the current director, Jonathan Jarvis, was nominated by President Obama, he'd spent 30 years as a civil servant. But he has taken to his political duties with all the fervor of a third-tier hack from the DNC, marrying the disinterested contempt of a meter maid with the zeal of an ambitious party apparatchik.

If this president has no compunction about closing off an open-air memorial from war veterans who are lucky to have lived long to see it, then there is no telling what he is capable of doing to punish you.

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